Challenging for Equity above all

Author: jaynel62

The following true tale is the introduction into what will be a series of posts regarding a seeming miscarriage of justice and potential disability discrimination; names have been changed to protect the identities of these involved. The purpose of this post is to help the family concerned achieve real justice; please share as widely as possible.

Alison is a single parent of14 year old Adam, both live with various diagnosed and pending diagnosis health disorders including Fibromyalgia and Elhers Danos; Alison is also Autistic and symptoms suggest Adam is as well.

Due to Adams health, he found it difficult to cope with school from the beginning and despite special educational needs intervention, including one to one lessons he struggled experiencing bullying which resulted in him developing depression. These experiences became worse during Adams transition from junior to senior school, so much so that in 2015, Alison began to home educate him. Utilising her qualifications in Advanced Sports Therapy, Holistic Therapies and counselling, Alison along with other professional devised and delivered a programme of education with a wide variety of skills and healthy activities. This proved very successful wih two reviews from the LEA and feedback from the young carers project Adam attended, resulting in him showing a general improvement in mental capacity, attitude and general happiness.

However despite the improvements in Adams education and development the local social services were unhappy and persuaded Alison to undertake a psychological assessment. This transpired to be 4 and ½ hours of Rorschach testing and a further 3 hours of probing of her medical history, during which time Alison without an advocate, perhaps understandably became extremely agitated. The findings of this assessment, which interestingly Alison’s own GP deemed totally unnecessary, was Alison being regarded as having Somatic Syndrome Disorder and thus influencing Adam into thinking he has medical conditions. The findings despite an array of medical, educational and other evidence to the contrary, was then used by social services to go to court, the outcome being Alison was found to be unable to care for her son and Adam was removed from home and taken into care.

The court when considering Adams future, refused to consider the historical and educational evidence of Adams physical and psychological health and relied entirely upon Alisons psychological assessment. The miscarriage of justice transpired therein as it appears that the psychological assessor determined: Alisons willingness and ability to research the most appropriate consultants for her sons health, indicates she is only willing to work with selected professionals; further it seems Alisons knowledge that her personal diagnoses of autism and elher danos both have a genetic pre-disposition to health issues, was considered by the assessor as a desire to transpose these onto Adam.

Further the court found that Adam should be taken into care permanently and that contact with his mother would only be regulated once Alison shows no further concern for the health of her son.

After yesterdays announcement of the Tories £1.5+ BILLION gift to DUP for Votes, today we learn disabled patients requiring a wheelchair are essentially reliant upon begging. It transpires disabled people unable to afford and needing, an alternative to the NHS 44lb wheelchair, is being forced to raise their own funds to purchase suitable equipment.

Please read and share this post, this letter requesting the college of OTs withdraw from their sponsorship deal with Capita. is an opportunity for you to add your support. As PIP claimants, Disabled people I feel this is an important request and the more of us sign the greater the likely impact. Hoping this campaign achieves its goal.

The Royal College of Occupational Therapists’ 2017 conference, taking place on Monday and Tuesday this week, has been sponsored by Capita, one of the private companies contracted to carry out Personal Independence Payments assessments.* I have written an open letter to the Royal College outlining why I think this is a terrible idea. I am collecting signatures for it until the end of the day onFriday June 23. After that I will email it to the Royal College and also publish the list of signatories here.If you are a disabled person / service user / survivor / healthcare professional and would be willing to put your name to the letter below, please contact me with the name & title you would like to go on the letter (e.g. I will sign as Rachel Rowan Olive, PIP claimant & mental health service user).

The day after the general election the House of Commons library released a flood of papers which had been held up because of purdah rules until after the result was known.

One of the most revealing papers was one on Banking Executives’ Renumeration in the UK. It drew on two sources – Britain’s submission ( required by EU rules ) to the European Banking Authority and British sources such as company reports and details from the banks themselves about long term incentives for senior executives.

The facts revealed in the annexes to this report confirm what a lot of people have suspected but have not always been able to prove. There is-a widening gulf between the top and the bottom that has been going on during the fiercest period of austerity which has seen real…

I can only support Gail in her comments ATOS… can rebrand as much as it likes, it doesn’t stop the DWP destroying disabled people’s lives when being assessed and losing their money, vehicles, jobs when they fail to be assessed correctly and leaving some so distraught their health actually deteriorates or they lose what income from working they had , and the worst case scenario is they are left housebound when they lose their mobility vehicles.

Following an independent review of the PIP assessment journey claimants experience in December 2014, Paul Gray recommended a number of changes to claimant communications to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) and Assessment Providers.
After consultation with DWP and reviewing our communications, we have introduced a new business name that better represents the work we do independently assessing PIP cases.
We believe Independent Assessment Services does this because: • It makes it clear that we are ‘independent’ providers, distinct from DWP • ‘Assessment’ explains the service we deliver assessing PIP cases more clearly than ‘healthcare’ does

It can rebrand as much as it likes, it doesn’t stop the DWP destroying disabled people’s lives when being assessed and losing their money, vehicles, jobs when they fail to be assessed correctly and leaving some so distraught their health actually deteriorates or they lose…

Thoughts on the crossroads of law, politics and society - for when 140 characters just won't do. This blog contains general information and commentary on legal matters. It is not intended to provide legal advice. This blog discusses the law in England, unless otherwise stated.